About the Author, J.X. Mason

J.X. Mason

“J.X. Mason” is the pen name for the Author of The Book of Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Meaning & Purpose – In Nature, Reason, and Science.

Our Author chose “J.X. Mason” as his pen name because the Path of Continuing Creation centers on constructive endeavors including designing, composing, growing, researching, inventing, teaching, and building.  The ancient and skilled craft of stonemasonry stands as an excellent representation of all constructive pursuits.  (We should note that J.X. Mason does not speak for, and has never been a member of, a fraternal organization of the Freemasons.)

J.X. Mason graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in History from Stanford University, where he was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key and was selected as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.  Soon after, he earned a Master’s Degree in Education and an MBA in Finance.  He served as a Naval Officer for three years, during which he saw combat during an amphibious landing of Marines.  The main part of Mason’s career was spent working at one of the world’s largest financial companies.  There, he invested money belonging to workers’ retirement plans by loaning it out to (and sometimes buying shares in) large and mid-sized corporations.  In retirement, JXM taught at a nationwide University, served as webmaster for a Unitarian Church, and edited a monthly newsletter called Distributed Power News, which reported on advances in green-energy and on-site power generation.

Our Contributing Experts and Editors

• A University Professor of Classics who graduated from Harvard and earned a PhD at Oxford University.
• Holding a Bachelor’s in English and a Master of Education from Stanford, this woman pursued a successful career in Systems Analysis and Information Technology Management.
• A scholar with advanced degrees in Spanish & International Business, this man has won teaching awards at a major university and has published articles on U.S. History.
• An Electronics Engineer with advanced degrees who pursued an extensive career at Bell Laboratories.
• A Professor of Medicine Emeritus from a prestigious university Medical School, this physician also has a highly informed interest in astronomy and the origin of the universe.
• A scholar in Theology and Classics, this woman has been a frequent guest lecturer at Unitarian congregations and is a respected blogger on off-grid living and sustainable farming.
• Two independent nationally recognized consultants in the fields of publishing, website design, blogging, and newsletters.
• A practicing psychiatrist who earned his MD degree from the Baylor College of Medicine.
• An ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister with many years of experience managing charitable organizations.

— J.X. Mason & Associates is the team of writers and editors who construct and update The Book of Continuing Creation.
— Continuing Creation LLC, which is a not-for-profit corporation, holds copyright for the Essays, Blogs, & Pages of this website.

A Message from Our Author, J.X. Mason

“For over 30 years, I have been studying spirituality, science, and the “undeveloped land” between them.  In those decades many authors published ground-breaking books about this intellectual landscape.  I wrote notes in the margins of 173 of those books and lined them up on shelves above my computer.  I also spent the last ten years writing hundreds of pages of notes, outlines, and draft pages for this Book, now called Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Meaning & Purpose – In Nature, Reason, & Science.  Our Book, which we also call Continuing Creation: The Growing, Organizing, Direction, of the Cosmos, is a collection of Essays now being serially published on this website.

“Nearly all of those books on my shelves were written by critically-acclaimed authorities in their fields, most of them university professors. I have listed books by twenty-seven of these authors below.  Most of these works call for a new synthesis of science and spirituality, although a minority of those authors say that such a synthesis is virtually impossible.  But none of those books tries to be a synthesis of science and secular spirituality.  This has always seemed curious to me, since Nature has long been both the fount of both Earth-centered spirituality and the subject of science.  The Book of Continuing Creation is intended to be the synthesis of science and non-supernatural, Earth-centered spirituality.

“On a personal level, this Book is the capstone to my nine-year AA journey out of alcoholic addiction. The Book’s spiritual practices continue to guide me during my years of sobriety, keeping me in contact with my Higher Power, which I call Continuing Creation.”  “I hope will enjoy reading our Book and my Blog Posts!   Very truly yours, — J.X. Mason.”

Selections from the Bibliography of Continuing Creation 

Listed by year of publication:

• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902).
• Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957).
• Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (1958).
• Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975).
• Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (1983).
• Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (1984).
• Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (1986).
• James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987).
• Dominick Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991).
• Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992)
• Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995)
• Lawrence LeShawn, How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery (1999)
• Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (1999).
• Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity & Islam (2000); and The Case for God (2010).
• Mark Forstater, The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius (2001).
• Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2002)
• Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and The Biology of Belief (2002)
• Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (2010)
• Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010).
• Stephen Prothero, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, (2010)
• Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (2003); and Is God a Mathematician? (2010).
• Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2002); and Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (2011).
• Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (2009); and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012).
• Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006); and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics (2013).
• Robert M. Hazen, The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet (2013).
• E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975); On Human Nature (1979); and The Meaning of Human Existence (2015).
• Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind (2015); and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017).